Chapter 132: Exchange of Fire

The unarmored Later Jin soldiers dismounted one after another. Take Tan, his face covered in pockmarks, had Zhang Zhongqi help him into his mail armor. He took a foot bow from his horse, hung two arrow quivers on his body — one of light arrows, one of heavy arrows — and finally shouldered his great blade.

Their Plain Blue Banner company was positioned on the right wing of the battle line, facing the Ming army's left wing. Also on the right wing was a contingent of Khorchin Mongols; the center was the Mongol Right Banner; the left wing was the Mongol Left Banner and smaller tribes like the Aokhan.

He was in a very relaxed mood. The Ming troops they had encountered since entering the pass had all been utterly feeble, and he believed it would be the same beneath the walls of Gu'an. All three hundred men of their company were here, plus over fifty White Armor Soldiers transferred from other banners. In Take Tan's eyes, their three hundred-odd men alone were enough to rout the several thousand Ming troops before them.

Ahead of him, Uncle Yilantai was also calmly donning his armor. Take Tan hurried over to help him straighten his gleaming white Bayara armor. He greatly envied Uncle Yilantai's suit of armor — silver-bright and extremely sturdy; he believed nothing could pierce it.

Yilantai gave a sly grin, the terrifying scar beside his left ear twisting into something even more hideous. "Take Tan, the good stuff in this city is bound to be even more plentiful than in Zunhua."

"Why's that?"

Yilantai lowered his voice: "This Ming capital region is too rich. Those with silver have mostly all fled inside the city walls. There are definitely loads of silver and women in there. Once we've slaughtered this bunch of Ming troops, I'll make sure you're first over the wall. I'll have a word with the Niru Commander, get him to save a few bondservants for you."

Take Tan hurriedly thanked him, then asked Yilantai, "Uncle Yilantai, do we just charge straight at them?"

Yilantai shook his head. "This bunch of Ming troops might be a bit tougher. The Company Commander has his own plan. Wiping them out is no problem; at most it'll take a bit more effort. Once this Ming force is gone, what's that city wall behind them going to stop?"

Take Tan said, "If we're scaling the wall, then I won't take my great blade."

"You're in light armor, mainly using bow and arrow. No need to take the great blade. The armored soldiers up front all have long spears and great blades. Once they scatter the enemy, you just follow and kill. A saber will be enough."

Take Tan quickly put his great blade back in its sheath and instructed Zhang Zhongqi, "Watch the horses well. Once the city is breached, be quick on your feet and follow us in to grab things."

Zhang Zhongqi, beaming with delight, agreed.

Take Tan paid him no more mind. He took out his antler thumb ring, slipped it onto his right thumb, and gently drew the bowstring to adjust the ring's position. The sound of hoofbeats came from the left. He looked toward the direction of the Regional Commander's central command. Several Khorchin and Aokhan taijis were leaving the command position, galloping across the front of the battle line straight toward the two wings.

After a moment, a rumbling sound came from both wings as over a hundred Mongol tribal cavalry from each side charged out, heading straight for the opposite side. They advanced to within a hundred paces, but the opposing side still showed no reaction. The cavalry gradually picked up speed and continued forward. Just as they entered sixty paces, several riders suddenly fell, their horses' hooves slipping. Both men and horses were thrown a long way. A few horses that had charged too fast tumbled and rolled several times on the ground. The cavalry behind wheeled their mounts and veered to the sides, yet some horses still fell. The following cavalry slowed down one after another, coming to a halt at the sixty-pace mark.

The Ming army's front row of firearms still did not fire a single shot. A strange look crossed Take Tan's face. In the past, the Ming troops he had seen always opened fire with guns and cannons from far away, making a great racket, but by the time you charged up to them, they were out of ammunition. This Ming force was indeed somewhat different.

From behind the gaps in the enemy's breastwork, some archers flashed into view and began loosing arrows at the halted cavalry. The Wendeng Battalion's killer squads needed no orders; as soon as the enemy entered fifty paces, any man in the killer squads who could shoot was free to return fire. Foot bows held an absolute advantage over cavalry bows at fifty paces, and the enemy cavalry were stationary, making them large targets.

Soon seven or eight cavalrymen were struck by arrows. Most of them wore no armor, so the arrows posed a great threat. Several horses, stung by arrow hits, bucked wildly and bolted, throwing their riders to the ground. The Khorchin cavalry fell into chaos. They quickly spurred their horses to scatter, breaking into small groups of a few men each.

They slowly rode across the frozen stretch, entering within fifty paces, then began galloping their horses laterally across the front. In groups of a few men, they shuttled back and forth thirty paces beyond the front line. The Mongols, raised on horseback, expertly used their cavalry bows to loose slanting volleys. The arrows, borrowing the horses' speed, soared high. Over a hundred light arrows traced parabolic arcs through the air and rained down on the Wendeng Battalion's position. A clatter of impacts against armor rang out, mixed with a few agonized screams.

The Khorchin cavalry were having a hard time of it too. At every gap in the Ming line, several archers were shooting at the cavalry galloping past the front. Arrows shuttled back and forth across the battlefield, and horses kept collapsing to the ground. The power of the foot bows far surpassed that of the cavalry bows. The Khorchin men were at a constant disadvantage; though they loosed many arrows, they were basically ineffective against the Ming troops' iron armor.

The Mongol tribes had come to plunder, and their will to fight was not strong. Finding the exchange of arrows unfavorable, they retreated farther and farther, and before long had withdrawn beyond fifty paces.

The sound of a gong ringing out came from Unage's central command. The Khorchin cavalry were finally released from their ordeal and hastily galloped back to the wings. The Ming breastwork's gaps fell silent as well. Only some arrow-struck Khorchin Mongol soldiers remained in the middle of the battlefield. The severely wounded lay on the ground howling; the lightly wounded scrambled on all fours, desperately fleeing back toward their own lines. A Mongol horse, hit by three arrows, struggled on the ground for a moment before standing up. It took two labored steps, then its front legs buckled and it collapsed again, letting out a plaintive whinny under the gaze of thousands.

Unage stared at that horse with a dark expression. The first probing attack had failed to draw out or reveal the Ming army's true strength, while his own side's losses were greater. After waiting for the Mongol taijis to return and report, he said to the Company Commander beside him, "There's some ice on the ground around fifty paces out. These Ming troops poured water over that stretch, but it's not very wide. Perhaps they were short on firewood."

"We should have advanced the main army rapidly yesterday, giving them no time for these tricks. But there's no need to fear them. We'll loose scattered volleys at seventy or eighty paces to draw their fire, then after they've fired, close to forty or fifty paces for direct shooting. After that, the armored soldiers will charge the gaps."

"This Ming force keeps its nerve. I'm afraid they won't fire recklessly."

The Company Commander said disdainfully, "So what? Once we close in, their firelocks are worth nothing. They dare to provoke our Great Jin like this? I will personally take that enemy commander's head, and not a single one of his soldiers will be spared."

Although this Company Commander sensed that the army before him was stronger than the average Ming force, years of easy victories had ingrained in him a deep-rooted contempt for Ming troops. He absolutely did not believe any Ming army could withstand the melee charge of Later Jin warriors.

Unage thought for a long while. He actually wanted to build shield carts, but there were no large stands of trees nearby, and constructing them would take time. Moreover, he himself did not much fear the Ming army's bird guns. Those things often burst their barrels, were extremely troublesome to reload, and even when they did fire, they could not pierce the iron armor of the Later Jin soldiers.

He finally nodded and made his decision. "Leave two hundred armored soldiers on each wing. The rest will press forward and charge the line..."

"No need to hold any back. All of them charge."

"Company Commander, my lord, it would be best to leave two hundred men. If the attack fails, the wings can prevent the Ming army from pursuing."

The Company Commander laughed heartily for a good while, as if he had heard the funniest joke, before saying, "Since when have Ming troops ever pursued our Great Jin warriors? Commit full strength, break their formation in one blow. The civilian laborers on those city walls will be scared out of their wits. They might surrender without us even needing to storm the city."

Unage was quite insistent on this point. He compromised slightly, leaving one hundred Jianzhou main-force soldiers on each wing, then dispatched several orderlies to relay commands to the various units.

The Company Commander also left the central command and returned to his own company's position on the right wing, where he summoned several Niru Commanders to arrange the battle formation.

After Yilantai's Niru Commander returned to their niru, he assigned tasks to the squad leaders and armored soldiers. These battle-hardened veterans all listened with calm expressions. The Niru Commander's briefing was also very simple: nothing more than stopping to shoot at eighty paces, then shooting again at forty or fifty paces where there was no ice, and finally, when charging the line, the light-armored troops falling back, and so on. The Niru Commander lastly made a special point about the frozen stretch of ground. It was not very wide, and he merely told them to slow down a little when crossing it.

After the Niru Commander finished speaking, Yilantai gave Take Tan an encouraging slap, grabbed his own great blade, mounted his horse, and withdrew to the position of the Bayara troops at the rear.

Take Tan followed the other light-armored archers to the very front. He was placed in the second rank of the light-armored archers, followed by several ranks of armored soldiers, and finally the Bayara troops. Besides the thirty-odd Bayara from the five niru of their own company, there were over fifty more transferred from other banners, totaling over eighty men. All of them were mounted and led personally by the Company Commander. They would be committed to battle at the most critical moment to deliver the fatal blow to the enemy.

The drums sounded. Take Tan held his composite bow in his left hand and strode forward with his comrades. After they had advanced a stretch, the armored soldiers in the rear ranks began to move, the iron plates of their armor clinking and clanging against one another. Heads surged along the battle line, the dense mass of armor and helmets reflecting countless points of light under the morning sun.

Some scattered Later Jin soldiers, armed with three-eyed guns and bird guns, rushed ahead first to fifty or sixty paces and opened fire on the opposite side, running back and forth in the middle to draw Ming fire. But the Ming line remained silent; no one fired.

The Later Jin battle line slowly advanced to one hundred paces. From the Ming army opposite rang out a sonorous slogan. A row of black firelocks was propped atop the breastwork, their dark muzzles aimed this way. Still, not a single man fired. Those Ming soldiers revealed only their heads, each wearing a Ming helmet. Through the gaps between men, Take Tan saw a patch of red tassels fluttering atop the wall opposite, and an inexplicable sense of dread seized his heart.

The sound of a gong rang out. The Niru Commander bellowed, and Take Tan and the others halted simultaneously. They were now a little over seventy paces from the low wall. Based on the Later Jin army's experience, Ming firearms had no killing power at this distance.

Take Tan stepped back slightly, skillfully took out a sharp-tipped light arrow, and clamped the arrow nock between his thumb and forefinger. He hooked the bowstring with the part of his right thumb wearing the thumb ring, pressing his index and middle fingers over the thumb (Note 1). He raised his left hand, the arrowhead pointing obliquely into the air, and his right hand began to slowly draw the bowstring. The other light-armored archers around him assumed the same posture. The bamboo cores of the composite bows emitted a continuous creaking and groaning sound.

A desolate conch horn sounded. Along the Jianzhou battle line rose the sound of countless bowstrings thrumming, like cotton being fluffed, like a gigantic swarm of bees passing overhead. Dense clusters of arrows soared into the sky simultaneously.

Take Tan's thumb suddenly released. The bowstring slid off the smooth surface of the thumb ring. The energy stored in the bamboo core was instantly unleashed upon the arrow nock. The light arrow flew out swiftly amid the twang of the bowstring. The birch shaft twisted in midair from the immense force, writhing like a snake's body. After flying the initial stretch, the birch shaft gradually stopped twisting, and the arrow's flight stabilized under the balance of the fletching. Together with over a thousand other light arrows, it tore through the air, merging into a sound like wind rushing through a forest.

As it passed its highest point and began its dive toward the Ming position, a swan-call rang out from the Ming formation below. Along the two-hundred-pace front of the breastwork, muzzle flashes merged into a single sheet of flame, accompanied by explosive cracks and dense white smoke. Seen from above, it was as if a white dragon of smoke had materialized out of thin air. Over one hundred and fifty combined-stock guns fired simultaneously. The six-mace-diameter lead balls instantly crossed the seventy-pace distance, easily tearing through the archers' cotton armor and mail, deforming and fragmenting inside their bodies, creating cavitation effects. The blood of the wounded sprayed violently outward through those wound channels, transforming into streams of blood arrows.

An armored soldier from the same niru standing in front of Take Tan was hit. The expensive mail armor did nothing to stop that cheap lead ball. Clutching his stomach, he struggled desperately on the ground, letting out inhuman, agonized screams. The lead ball had churned the intestines inside into a pulp, and the blood flowing out was mixed with the colors of multicolored feces.

Encountering a formidable foe for the first time, Take Tan listened to the hoarse, exhausted howls around him. His hands trembled slightly, and waves of urge to urinate rose uncontrollably from his lower body. After the man in front of him fell, Take Tan faced that low wall directly. He had never imagined firelocks could be so deadly. He was now terrified of just standing there stupidly, terrified that white smoke and flame would suddenly erupt from behind that wall, because there was simply no way to see the bullets. A powerful fear of the unknown gripped his heart.

The Later Jin army lost nearly fifty men in that single volley. This hit rate was far below the Wendeng Battalion's training results, yet it still shook the entire Later Jin force, which was no longer as orderly and composed as it had been at the start. A squad leader behind them was shouting and cursing loudly, ordering the soldiers to shoot quickly. Take Tan tore his gaze away, suppressing the tension in his heart. Just as he was about to draw his bow, another volley of gunfire erupted from behind the breastwork opposite.

More screams rose from the Later Jin line. A clang sounded from diagonally ahead of Take Tan. An archer's chest-protecting mirror had been pierced by a lead ball. He shuddered as if electrocuted, then fell straight to the ground and lay motionless, a large pool of blood steadily spreading out from beneath him.

The second wave of light arrows was loosed, and screams likewise rang out from the opposite side, which had clearly also suffered losses. By the time he had shot ten arrows, the opposing side had returned fire with two more volleys. These two Ming volleys were not as uniform as the first and second. He was still fortunate enough not to be hit, but the Later Jin army's front-rank archers had suffered heavy casualties in the four volleys, with over one hundred and seventy men killed or wounded. The Later Jin army had also loosed nearly ten thousand light arrows, studding even that low wall so thickly with shafts that it resembled a hedgehog.

On the Wendeng Battalion's command platform, with a few light arrows stuck in it, Chen Xin gently pushed aside several shielding long-shield bearers. The Wendeng Battalion had only used its front two ranks of firearms troops to return fire; the rear two ranks had not fired at all. Chen Xin was saving them for the most critical moment.

Watching the struggling wounded soldiers collapsing on the Later Jin line, his mood became even more relaxed than at the start. The Jianzhou bandits' archery was nothing more than this. These flimsy light arrows were basically ineffective against armor. The killer squads deployed in column formation, shielded by shields and iron armor, had suffered almost no losses. The firearms troops had the breastwork for cover, but because the arrows came in on high trajectories, there were still several dozen casualties, though most would not be fatal wounds.

The Later Jin could not sustain this exchange ratio in a shooting duel; their manpower was nowhere near comparable to the Great Ming's.

Soon, the Later Jin army's central command beat the great drums. The light-armored archers fell back one after another, and heavy-armored soldiers began appearing at the front. The first rank was a dense line of shield-bearers. The Jianzhou bandits began advancing to the beat of the drums, the shield line pressing forward like a solid wall.

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Note 1: East Asian composite bows all use the Mongol archery method, drawing the string with the thumb. See related images in the work for details.